Brazil Bound: December 30, 2014- Natal

Hi family!!

This was a special, unforgettable Christmas week for me! I loved seeing your beautiful faces and knowing that you actually exisit!! Haha At times I begin to think that you must be robots writing my weekly emails because home can seem pretty distant. Anyway, it was wonderful to spend a few short but memorable moments with some of my favorites!

Actually, the week began really well! On monday night we had a family Home evening with Joyce, Alexandre, Pietro and a few other families from the ward. They have been really wanting to invite people over to their house for quite sometime and it was a beautiful night. Complete with a funny scripture chase, a Mormon message and a even PRESENTS!! Joyce and Alexandre gave us dedicated books wrapped beautiful with handwritten cards. They told us that they are praying that God will bless us with the kinds of families that we helped them to create. Very touching. (**I need your help family!! We have just discovered that it is possible to put mormon messages on DVDs and we now show them all the time. And we are having a lot of success. So pretty please find some good ones on youtube and send me the titles!! Thanks!)

We received sooo many invites from people wanting to spend some precious time with us on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. We offered to help Joyce in the grocery store because the lines were enormous and I had an idea... We decided to put our little 5 year old Pietro to work. I gave him a huge stack of Christmas pass-a-long cards and he went around giving them to everyone in the store. It was a miracle!! People stopped, listened, accepted the card and even hugged him! Yeah never happens with us grown up missionaries.

The bishop´s wife made us cheesecake-- a heavenly present.

We stopped by another family we are teaching, Ivan Angela and they manyyy kids and grandkids. We had planned to share a short message, but that was simply not an option... They discovered that we were not planning to stay the whole night and got super sad/mad. Ivan ran for the keys, planning to lock us in. Thankfully, he decided to enjoy the time we had with them instead. They hurried and finished they Christmas feast a little earlier than expected so we could eat. There was SOO MUCH FOOD. But the love they showed for us was simply inspiring.

We ate dinner with a recent convert family. She said that Christmas has always been a family thing, but seeing as us missionaries are now an essential part of her family, she invited us to share the special moments with her.

After we got home, we decided to have a little Christmas Eve devotional in front of our little tree. We sang a hymn, read Luke 2 and talked about our gifts from the Savior. I noticed something that I hadn´t before as I read that Christmas Eve... the oh so faithful shepherds. I think I had something that Ivan said still ringing in my mind. He thanked us for being the angels sent into his life to fill him with good tidings of great JOY. As I thought about this, I compared our many wonderful, faithful investigators with the shepherds. On that Christmas eve so long ago, they decided to accept the invitation to know Christ more personally. They dropped everything and went with haste. And, after they had experienced the peace and joy that only Christ could bring, they went forth sharing the good news with others.

This year I am grateful to get the opportunity to spend some time with the most humble of humble. I will give you some examples...

João is still struggling a little to officially break up with his girlfriend but is making great progress. On Saturday we invited him to come to a baptism with us so he could experience, for himself, the wonderful miracle of baptism. And he was ever so touched. After, we asked the Elders Quorum president and a few of the members to participate in a blessing. After, one Irmão asked him to kneel to his heavenly father and ask help to overcome this problem. He was meaning before bed, but cute João knelt at his feet right on the spot. The irmão basically died of embarrassment and shot us a look as if to say ``Sorry sisters!!´´ But the humility in which he showed and desire to do the right thing was inspiring.

Ivan was so excited to participate in the ward Christmas gift exchange. He picked a family and had his daughter make a huge cake. He wrapped in all cute and gave it to her, proudly, at church. As we left his house the other night he asked where we were off to. We told him, to visit some people of course!! And he asked if he could come with us to learn some more.

Gabrielle is all sorts of excited about her mission goals. Turns out she has a cousin about her age who is also member of the church!! And now they are planning to serve, here in a few years, together! I can imagine it now, them serving in some country learning a language and a culture together and keeping each other updated through letters. (sound familiar Vern? J) So Sunday just minutes after she was confirmed, she leaned over to me and asked if she could start teaching with us to practice! Ahh she is darling!

I learned something this week… I learned why missionary work is a commandment. Not just for 19 year old pip squeaks, but for all members of the church. Not because of what we have to say, necessarily, but what we have to learn. Because let me tell you, I am learning oh so very much from my little shepherds. They are so humble and excited to learn. They recognize the importance of the message and are willing to do anything to be worthy of it.

We also ate lunch with Paulinho and fam and obviously, it was incredible. Food, family and some Christmas loving. Such a blessing to have them close.

Soo, I am a happy girl. Love you all and have a great Ano Novo!

Sister Lauren